Thermal Analysis of Your Circuit

Anytime energy transfers from one form to another, some energy is always dissipated as heat. That heat energy transfers through your circuit board and components primarily through conduction. But a secondary form of heat energy transfer is convection, so the orientation of your circuit board will affect the way heat energy moves through your design and into other components or the environment.

An efficient design converts as little electrical energy to heat energy as possible. Linear voltage regulators such as the 7805 and 7812 dissipate a great deal of electrical energy into the environment as heat energy as they step down from one potential difference to another. Switching power supplies dissipate far less energy and can generate high potential differences from low potential differences at the cost of circuit complexity and ripple/noise.

Schematic View

Click on "Schematic" for a schematic diagram view that you can output to your own design software.

Circuit Simulation

Click on "Sim" to have your circuit simulated in a variety of situations: Startup, Steady State, Input Transient, Output Transient, and Bode Plot.

Here we see the startup analysis of the circuit. It takes approximately 0.0014 seconds to reach an operating potential difference of 3.3 V when a 17 V potential difference is introduced to the circuit.

Build-It Option

Click "Build-It Lite" to generate an order form for your Bill of Materials from TI's database. Click "Order" to begin the order process.